Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982:

Establishing Yucca Mountain as America's Nuclear Waste Dump Site

 

 

 

 

 

 

Berkshire University

Professor Regis Wright

 

 

 

 

 

 

By,

 

Andrea L. Sitler

April 23, 2006
Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982:

Establishing Yucca Mountain as America's Nuclear Waste Dump Site

 

 

 

 

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission[1] was designed to oversee nuclear related issues due to the hazards involved with such a product.  The transportation[2] of nuclear material is highly regulated as are the dump sites for nuclear waste.  The factors of half lives[3] and potential of contamination[4] is what brought the need for the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982[5].  From these policies comes the Yucca Mountain Project which was selected to be the dump site for all of America's Nuclear Waste.  The Yucca Mountain Project is under strict scrutiny.  It is the ultimate terrorist[6] magnet as well as a myriad of legal issues and processes.  This project must provide a secure site for over 10,000 years of nuclear waste housing.[7]

 

In 1982, the U.S. Congress enacted a law called the Nuclear Waste Policy Act. The Act established a comprehensive national program for the safe, permanent disposal of highly radioactive wastes. This law is based on the principle that our society is responsible for safely disposing of the nuclear wastes we create.

The Act directed the U.S. Department of Energy to study suitable sites for a geologic repository. The geologic repository envisioned by the Act is an engineered disposal facility located deep underground. After more than two decades of scientific study, in 2002, Congress and the President approved the development of a geologic repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada.[8]

 

"Approximately 45,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel is currently stored at 131 sites in 39 states. Each year, approximately 2,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel is generated by operating nuclear power plants. The total amount of commercial spent nuclear fuel is expected to reach approximately 60,000 metric tons by the year 2010."[9]  Locating a safe haven to rest these spent fuel rods is what the Yucca Mountain Project is all about.  Transporting the rods to Yucca Mountain, NV is the concern of the Department of Transportation (DOT)[10].  Safe transport to a designated facility came under heavy debate during the Joint Hearing of the Railroad and Highway Subcommittees hearing on transport of spent rods to the Yucca Mountain Facility.[11]  

In June 1979, the Department of Transportation (DOT) and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) regarding the transport of radioactive material. This agreement delineates the respective responsibilities of DOT and NRC for the regulation of radioactive material in transport. DOT and NRC also agreed to maintain consistent and comprehensive transportation regulations. Due to advancements of transportation and security programs, they both plan to review their regulatory plans within the next two years.

The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 made the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) responsible for site selection, construction, and operation of an underground disposal facility for spent nuclear fuel and high-level waste. In 1987, Congress amended the Nuclear Waste Policy Act to set up a process for Congressional review of the site and directed DOE to study only Yucca Mountain and stressed that if, at any time, Yucca Mountain is found unsuitable, studies will be stopped immediately and DOE will seek new direction from Congress. In February 2002, the President approved Yucca Mountain as a repository site.

Under the 1987 Nuclear Waste Policy Act amendment in April 2002, the Governor of Nevada issued a notice of disapproval of the site selection. The site is disapproved unless Congress passes a joint resolution to approve the site during the first 90 calendar days of continuous session following the notice of disapproval. On April 11, 2002, H.J.Res. 87 was introduced by Congressman Barton. Pending proposed Subcommittee action, the Energy and Commerce Committee plans to report H.J.Res. 87 on Thursday, April 25, 2002.

If the Yucca site is approved, it is likely spent nuclear fuel will be shipped from around the country to the site primarily by railroads. Despite railroad opposition, the Interstate Commerce Commission ruled that railroads are required by federal law (as common carriers) to transport all goods tendered to it. [12]

 

Yucca Mountain had many supporters as well as objectors.  

In the 1992 Energy Policy Act, Congress ordered the three agencies to focus their full attention on this site and to devise the safest storage structure feasible there.

To ensure their success, Congress charged an independent panel of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) with analyzing Yucca Mountain. And, Congress required that the containment standards eventually created be "consistent with and based upon" NAS's findings.

Analyzing Yucca took much of the next decade. Working through its contingencies produced a detailed knowledge of Yucca Mountain and its probable futures. The design was tweaked accordingly.[13]

 

 "Yucca Mountain was chosen as the potential site for geologic disposal of high-level radioactive waste partly because of its geologic setting, which is a natural barrier to the potential movement of radionuclides from the site.  USGS geologists have worked for more than twenty years to characterize the site geology for repository design."[14]  Analysis of rock properties, geologic history, geologic structures that could affect groundwater flow and contamination as well the potential for future geologic hazards such as volcanoes, earthquakes and erosion are all factors in selecting Yucca Mountain as the waste disposal site.^[15] 

 

The chosen site, just as White Sands in NM, is one which has been used for years of weapons testing.  Radiation and such is nothing new in this area.  The disposal site is to be situated on the edges of Nellis Air Force Base and the Nevada Test Site.  Both sites are government properties.  The next neighbor is Death Valley.  With temperatures topping 140 degrees, the population there is minimal as well. Nevada is a hot, dry, desert climate.  There is little rain to be concerned with ground seepage and run off.   

 

Yucca Mountain is a 1200 foot high flat topped volcanic ridge extending six miles north to south.  It is comprised of tuff, a rock made from compacted volcanic ash formed approx. 13 million years ago.  The nuclear waste repository would be built approx. 1000 ft. below the land surface and 1000 ft above the water table.  The repository would house 77,000 tons of highly radioactive material form 72 commercial and 43 research sites in 43 states.  The material would come from commercial nuclear power plants and government’s weapons programs.[16] 

 

 

The nuclear waste is to be stored in emplacement tunnels[17]. These tunnels are bored into the mountain, sealed by doors and back filled with rock material.  Inside the tunnels, robotic observation gantries monitor waste packages for possible leaks or disturbances from natural occurrences.  According to government engineers, waste packages can be removed and the process reversed, in emergency situations.

 

The design of the facility is such that waste materials will pose no significant risks for a period lasting beyond 10,000 years.  The bulk of the disposed material is to be 90% inactive within 100 years. Opponents are concerned by the area’s seismic and volcanic history, erosion and other natural geologic events.  They say that if a natural disaster were to happen in the area and compromise the repository’s design, water passing through Yucca Mt. and storage tunnels might pick up radioactive elements and carry them to the aquifer water table below.  This flows southeast into the Amargosa Valley where there are people and agriculture.[18]   

 

 

Geological events are of concern when determining where to construct a nuclear waste disposal site.  The DOE ordered studies of earthquakes and volcanic events in the area.

 

The largest earthquake at the repository itself, as known from geologic evidence, had a slip of about 1 meter; earthquakes of this size appear to recur at intervals like tens of thousands of years there. The possibility of strong ground motion from faults outside the immediate area exists at a much smaller recurrence interval, but their ground motion is predicted to be less and is being considered in the seismic design.

 

Study 1 - Analysis of the available data indicates that, since 1976, there have been 621 seismic events of magnitude greater than 2.5 within a 50-mile radius of Yucca Mountain. Reported underground nuclear weapons tests at the Nevada Test Site have been excluded from this count.

The most notable event during this period was a magnitude 5.6 earthquake near Little Skull Mountain, about 8 miles southeast of the Yucca Mountain site, which occurred on June 29, 1992. This earthquake caused damage to a nearby Department of Energy field office building. This earthquake, and many after-shocks, occurred on a fault that had not previously been identified. The Little Skull Mountain earthquake and numerous others at about the same time in the western U.S. are considered to have been triggered by the magnitude 7.4 Landers earthquake, in California.

The only significant cluster of earthquake activity in the 50-mile radius area is in Rock Valley, about 12 miles southeast of Yucca Mountain. The data base also reveals that, in 1948, there was a magnitude 3.6 event on the southeast boundary of the Yucca Mountain site, in an area known to have a number of faults. Recently, there have been other events recorded beneath Yucca Mountain with magnitudes less than 2.5.

Earthquake activity is a safety concern both during operation, above and below ground, and after closure of a repository at Yucca Mountain.

The mountain ranges and valleys of the Basin and Range, including the Yucca Mountain area, are a result of millions of years of intense faulting and volcanism. Records of recent events indicate that faulting is an ongoing process in the vicinity of Yucca Mountain that is expected to continue long into the future. Thirty-three faults are known to exist within and adjacent to the Yucca Mountain site.[19] 

Study 2 - PASADENA--Recent geodetic measurements using Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites show that the Yucca Mountain area in southern Nevada is straining roughly 10 to 100 times faster than expected on the basis of the geologic history of the area. And for the moment at least, geologists are at a loss to explain the anomaly.

In the March 28 issue of the journal Science, Brian Wernicke of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and his colleagues at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, report on Global Positioning System surveys they conducted from 1991 to 1997. Those surveys show that the Yucca Mountain area is stretching apart at about one millimeter per year east-southeastward.

"The question is why the predicted geological rates of stretching are so much lower than what we are measuring?" asks Wernicke. "That's something we need to think through and understand."

The answer is likely to be of interest to quite a few people, because Yucca Mountain has been proposed as a site for the permanent disposal of high-level radioactive waste. Experts believe that the waste-disposal site can accommodate a certain amount of seismic activity, but they nonetheless would like for any site to have a certain amount of stability over the next 10,000 to 100,000 years.

Yucca Mountain was already known to have both seismic and volcanic activity, Wernicke says. An example of the former is the 5.4-magnitude "Little Skull Mountain" earthquake that occurred in 1992. And an example of the latter is the 80,000-year-old volcano to the south of the mountain. The volcano is inactive, but still must be studied according to Department of Energy regulations.

The problem the new study poses is that the strain is building up in the crust at a rate about one-fourth that of the most rapidly straining areas of the earth's crust, such as near the San Andreas fault, Wernicke says. But there could be other factors at work.

"There are three possibilities that we outline in the paper as to why the satellite data doesn't agree with the average predicted by the geological record," he says. "Either the average is wrong, or we are wrong, or there's some kind of pulse of activity going on and we just happened to take our data during the pulse."

The latter scenario, Wernicke believes, could turn out to be the case. But if Yucca Mountain is really as seismically active as the current data indicate at face value, the likelihood of magmatic and tectonic events could be 10 times higher than once believed.[20]

 

Earthquakes are common on the San Andres fault.  This line runs to the west of the Yucca Mountains.  When a large earthquake is experienced in CA, there is ground motion felt at Yucca but nothing that can do damage.[21]  The facility is designed to California earthquake standards or higher. This meaning that CA standards say building must withstand an earthquake up to a magnitude of seven.  This facility is being constructed to withstand even greater magnitude quakes.  The Yucca Mountain facility is to withstand earthquakes up to any currently conceivable level. 

 

The issue of earthquakes during transport is also taken into consideration and provisions have been put into place. Only solid waste is proposed for storage, therefore an earthquake would not result in any direct release of radioactivity to the air or ground water even if, in an extremely unlikely event, a canister were ruptured.[22]

Seismologists believe that the level of seismic activity in the vicinity of Yucca Mountain has stayed about the same, except for a few years following the 1992 Little Skull Mt. earthquake which had thousands of aftershocks, but confined to a relatively small area. The current level seems consistent with the historical level and probably with the level over the past few thousand years. Continued monitoring is important in verifying that this level stays nearly constant. The appearance of many earthquakes near Yucca Mountain on some NSL maps of seismic activity is, in large part, due to the dense and sensitive network that NSL operates there. In geologic time, it has been over 50,000 years since an event of at least M 6.5 has occurred within this range.[23]

 

Transport of the nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain is a concern.  Both truck transport and rail transport will be used[24]. The routes for entrance to this facility are being carefully thought out and designed.  This is to insure the least amount of access to people or natural disasters such as an earthquake enroot. Flight plans from Nellis Air Force Base was also discussed.[25]  The potential for terrorists' attacks upon the shipments is also under study.

 

Specially equipped facilities and personnel specifically trained in the handling of high-level radioactive waste will man this facility. This holds true for any personnel involved in any way with this facility, the transportation, packaging, handling at either end and so forth.  What people in general fail to realize is that the people working with this product are taught to respect the product.  They desire their own personal safety and will be subjecting themselves to great personal harm should they not be diligent in their work.[26]

 

President George W. Bush agreed with the logic and studies of these scientists and engineers enough that on July 23, 2002, after two decades of study[27] and debate in both the House and Senate, he signed House Joint Resolution 87- the Yucca Mountain Bill.  This "will allow us, after a decade of scientific study, to take the next step in establishing a safe repository in which to store our nation's nuclear waste."[28]

 

Yucca Mountain is located approximately 100 miles Northwest of Las Vegas[29].  "The scientists have researched and developed advanced methods of disposal that works with the mountain to protect the general population." [30]Supporters say the winds do not blow in the direction of Las Vegas.  They claim the area to be sparsely populated, dry and stable.

 

Even after the President signed the Yucca Mountain Bill, much object still surrounds this project.  "As always, the population in these remote areas is primarily Native Americans."[31] A local Indian Tribe, the Western Shoshone Nation,[32]  is near by the mountain living on reservation land.  Many claim that the government still sees this land as government land thereby being able to use it as they deem fit.  History has proven to us that the government has placed little value in the life of an Indian[33] and therefore would not consider them a potential factor of risk. 

 

Local groups, tribes and scientists paint an entirely different view of the Yucca Mountain project. On the surface, you see a "not in my backyard syndrome" however the reasons for choosing Yucca Mountain may be more political than scientific.[34]

 

Though the nuclear industry has been quoted as saying that Yucca Mountain is "oppressively hot, bone dry, and uninhabited," there is actually a large water table there that supplies water to the very much inhabited Amargosa Valley farming region. From this region milk from dairy cows, alfalfa, and nuts, amongst other things, are produced and shipped all over the country for consumption.

There are 33 known earthquake faults in and around the Yucca Mountain site.  And did you know that it is in a volcanic zone?  One volcano, just 10 miles away, is believed by scientists to be the biggest threat to the site.

Do you think that a small mountain that sits near volcanoes, in an active earthquake region, and atop a large water table, the cleanliness of which affects food products which feed the entire country, is a good place for permanent high-level nuclear waste storage? Neither does the Department of Energy (DOE), really. Since nuclear waste is so unpopular, the only "good" place for it is wherever the nuclear industry can force it. It figures that Nevada was thought to be an easy target because the federal government has been forcing things on Nevada for more than 50 years ... above and below ground testing at the Nevada Test Site, etc. More than two-thirds of the land in the state of Nevada is owned by the federal government; and, though Nevada is the third most seismically active state in the Union, it has fewer representatives in the congress than many states.  Only California and Alaska have more frequent earthquakes.  During the last 20 years there have been more than 600 earthquakes within 50 miles of Yucca Mountain. 

However, with the permanent population of Las Vegas, NV currently growing at a rate of 6,000 per month, Nevada's political power continues to increase. And the unpopularity of nuclear waste and of the nuclear industry continues to increase. People everywhere are recognizing the insanity of the nuclear fuel cycle.[35]

 

The U.S. Government, through Senate Bill 958[36], introduced, May 24th, 2001, - the "Western Shoshone Claims Distribution Act"[37], is attempting to once again renege on a treaty with an Indian Nation.  The government needs the Western Shoshone Nation to sell them the land or to find a way to force the Nation off the land in order to build this site and its railway.  This bill avoids just compensation under the Fifth Amendment, which would provide approximately $20 billion to the Western Shoshone Nation.

 

In the US v. Sioux Nation, 448 US 371 (1980); the Supreme Court[38] held that a taking by the US in violation of a similar treaty was covered by the Fifth Amendment including compound interest. The US has made no equitable offer of settlement, and the Western Shoshone Nation is under no obligation to sell property that is constitutionally guaranteed.

The Treaty of Ruby Valley[39] shares equal status with the US Constitution, Art. IV[40], "This Constitution… and all treaties made… shall be the supreme law of the land." Congress can not legislatively supersede the US Constitution. To do so is constitutional subversion.  Additionally, the Western Shoshone Nation, as any Indian Tribe, does not wish to sell their land.[41]

 

This entire land issue has delayed but not stopped the project.

One thing not mentioned is that the most legally secure argument against Yucca Mountain and any further spending is the fact that the DOE cannot show clear title to the area. The US DOE is required to show ownership of the "controlled area" by 10 CFR 63.121. It cannot do this because Yucca Mountain, sacred to Western Shoshone, is located within Western Shoshone ancestral and Treaty lands. The 1863 Treaty of Ruby Valley, recognizing Western Shoshone land boundaries is still in full force and effect. See Western Shoshone v. U.S., No. 03-CV-2009, U.S. District Court, D.C. (Judge Lamberth), www.hermanlaw.org. Further, ancestral title is still very much alive despite U.S. attempts to silence the issue through use of the Indian Claims Commission Act. See Complaint, Western Shoshone v. U.S.. In fact, in January of last year, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Organization of American States, found the U.S. in violation of international law (right to property, to due process and to equality under the law) with regard to the U.S.' refusal to recognize Western Shoshone rights to these lands. See www.indianlaw.org (Dann decision)."[42]

 

 

This controversial project has gathered much attention.  Studies upon studies continue as this project develops.  Environmental Impact Studies top the list.[43]  Even the studies[44] disagree and conflict.[45] This adds more fuel to the fire of the opposing parties.

 

The exponentially growing Las Vegas population[46] is providing Nevada with the potential for new representation.  Law suits abound to end the project while threats from key senators edge the President forward.  Despite all the set backs and distractions, Yucca Mountain is forging forward.[47] 

Yucca Mountain was approved for development in 2002 and DOE had to delay their request for a site license for construction in 2004. Submission of a license application was delayed for several reasons; however, two primary and persistent problems are a court ruling that invalidates the EPA compliance period for waste disposal and under funding of the Yucca Mountain project by about $1 billion over the past 10 years. Spending within OCRWM will focus on defending the department's license application at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, improving decaying site infrastructure, planning facilities for the receipt of spent waste and developing a transportation infrastructure for spent waste.

Overall the Yucca Mountain project would receive $355.4 million, an increase of $49.5 million over FY 2006 funding. Transportation development would increase from $19.9 million in FY 2006 to $67.8 million and the President's request eliminates funding for the Integrated Spent Fuel Recycling program that Congress appropriated $49.5 million for in FY 2006.[48]

 

 

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has taken on a tough and much needed project.  Much litigation and legal issues have been examined and decided.  Many more legal issues are still on the horizon. A solution for disposal should have been considered before construction but as with many projects, this was not the case.  Since the beginning of the Nuclear Age[49] in 1895 by the discovery of x-rays by Wilhelm Roentgen, we have been dealing with nuclear concerns.[50] The Manhattan Project[51] in 1942 brought the reality of the effects of radioactivity to the attention of the government.  Finally, over sixty years later, thanks to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, we are beginning to provide an answer for these issues.

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